Political Ecology - Overview

Overview

Political ecology’s broad scope and interdisciplinary nature lends itself to multiple definitions and understandings. However, common assumptions across the field give it relevance. Raymond L. Bryant and Sinéad Bailey have developed three fundamental assumptions in practicing political ecology:

• First, costs and benefits associated with environmental change are distributed unequally. Changes in the environment do not affect society in a homogenous way: political, social, and economic differences account for uneven distribution of costs and benefits.

• Second, this unequal distribution inevitably reinforces or reduces existing social and economic inequalities. In this assumption, political ecology runs into inherent political economies as “any change in environmental conditions must affect the political and economic status quo.” (Bryant and Bailey 1997, p. 28).

• Third, the unequal distribution of costs and benefits and the reinforcing or reducing of pre-existing inequalities holds political implications in terms of the altered power relationships that now result.

In addition, political ecology attempts to provide critiques as well as alternatives in the interplay of the environment and political, economic and social factors. Robbins asserts that the discipline has a “normative understanding that there are very likely better, less coercive, less exploitative, and more sustainable ways of doing things” (2004, 12).

From these assumptions, political ecology can be used to:

• inform policymakers and organizations of the complexities surrounding environment and development, thereby contributing to better environmental governance.
• understand the decisions that communities make about the natural environment in the context of their political environment, economic pressure, and societal regulations
• look at how unequal relations in and among societies affect the natural environment, especially in context of government policy